Swedish Bitcoin Exchange Safello Wants To Become “European Coinbase”

Swedish bitcoin exchange Safello, started operation in 2013, from the beginning has set itself quite ambitious goals, but at some point began to lose the competitive race. Nevertheless, the management of the exchange does not refuse from its plans, and one of the important steps on the way to becoming a "European Coinbase" is the addition of new payment options.

According to the head Safello, Frank Schaul, slow progress was largely due to the very mission of the company, since many were very skeptical about the cryptocurrency.

We tried to create a platform for banking services from the very beginning. Unfortunately, it was early and too ambitious, so in 2016 we went back to the very begining. Then it was almost impossible to convince the providers of payment services or financial institutions to collaborate wish us, says Frank Schaul.

Over the past year human relation to bitcoin, however, is improving, including from outside the traditional business. Safello was able to take full advantage of this trend. The new partnership provided the opportunity to purchase cryptocurrency with Mastercard and Visa, and the list of supported currencies includes British pound, euro, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Czech koruna, Swiss franc and Hungarian forint.

In the near future the company plans to add new payment methods, as well as restart ICBIT - p2p-exchange of cryptocurrency futures, which Safello purchased in October 2016. Noteworthy is the return of Safello to the Norwegian market. This helped by the fact that the Norwegian authorities only this year abolished VAT on operations with bitcoin, joining the relevant EU law of 2015.

As Frank Schaul noted, technically the company was ready to enter the Norwegian market for a long time and was just waiting for a suitable opportunity. Now Safello is present throughout Europe, except for Iceland, where cryptocurrencies operations are limited at the legislative level, and the number of its customers is estimated at "tens of thousands."